Wait a sec. I thought that it was just his wife's family making all this stuff up for TV.

Came to say this and...

Quote:

"The happiest Laker is the one whose father was addicted to heroin, whose mother died of colon cancer when he was 12, who attended three high schools, had his first college scholarship revoked before the fall semester of his freshman year, became a subject of three college investigations, declared for the NBA draft, tried unsuccessfully to pull out of the draft, was picked by arguably the worst franchise in sports, violated the league's antidrug policy twice within eight months and after finally getting his life together, went home to New York City for an aunt's funeral and wound up burying his 6½-month-old son, then getting robbed at gunpoint."

The off-court woes only mounted over the years, with the summer of 2011 proving especially tumultuous, as Odom watched his cousin die after being shot in the head and was a passenger in an SUV that was involved in an accident that killed a 15-year-old cyclist.